Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Oh yea Colbert? Well I think you’re… hot.Damn it.In the most recent issue of The Onion Stephen Colbert (or Cuddle Buns as I prefer to call him) asserted that:Jon [“Love Muffin,” Stewart] couldn't say on camera that he thinks Rosa Parks was overrated, because that's a hateful thing to say. But this character [Stephen Colbert’s character on the Colbert Report] can get away with it, because the audience on some level knows [he doesn't] mean it.What?! Stop judging me!Ok, so I may have said that I think that Rosa Parks is over-rated. But I did this huge research project on the Bus Boycott and it was a planned event. Yes, Rosa Parks was a good woman, brave and willing to face up to many dangers. But it wasn’t as though one day she was just not gonna move. She’d previously refused to move and had no negative repercussions. The Civil Rights movement didn’t just fall into place because people decided to randomly make changes. The Movement was carefully orchestrated by very intentional people who needed a figure like Rosa Parks.Rosa Parks should be admired, but not for the reasons you think. Rosa was brave enough to face the potential consequences that went far beyond jail time. There's a difference between a fireman saving a baby from a burning building and a civilian doing the same.Rosa Parks didn't stumble upon icon status by accident, it wasn't her feet that were tired of sitting in the back of the bus.

Ok see here's the deal. I'm grouchy and I broke my foot. Well, ok it turns out that I didn't break it. I did something crazy to it and my Doctor says there's nothing to be done about it and not to walk for basically a month. So I've been hobbling around and laying about with my foot up. Since I've been at home every day I've been doing the following:Weeping.Reading a lot.Writing angry letters to Albertsons.Watching embarrassing TV. Hey food channel.Obsessing about money.Obsessing about my telephone.Obsessing about why people with legitimate exercise induced foot injuries have to park in the back of the parking lots, but people who can't walk because they're fat get to park in the handicapped spots.Looking forward to mobility.Obsessing about my foot.Not having anything exciting happen to me to blog about. (I don't even need to bitch about the weather, seeing as I can't go anywhere.)

So my grandmother really believes in homeopathic medicine. So she's always giving me horrible remedies for things.Ex. 1. When I was tiny she made me take these stinky brown liquid vitamins. Picture my mom tearing around the house and pinning cute little Quiana in piggy-tails to the ground and jamming a full dropper in her mouth mostly missing. Even though each bottle was 2 months worth Grandma always sent one a month... just in case. (She continues this tradition to this date, when I last moved I threw out 8 bottles of vitamins.) One day my mom was lecturing me about behaving like a baby when it was vitamin time. I told her “if you like the vitamins so much, why don’t you take them?” She said "fine, I will." She put a drop on her tongue and then hurled everywhere.Ex. 2. The dust infused with positive energy. So I was having some serious health problems a few years back and (as usual) was hiding them from Grandma. Well, when she got wind of my illness she came bustling over with this little tub. It was filled with dust. This dust was a mix of mud and ground crystals that were "infused with positive energy." Basically she was trying to get me to consume magic dirt. "It's from Wyoming," she assured me. "Oh, I see, Wyoming is healthy and magical, it must be the dirt! Wyoming, the Magic Dirt State.") It had cost her a bundle but I threw it away; wasn't it this very same woman who admonished me for playing in the dirt as a child? Even 4 year old Quiana knew not to eat mud pies. Later I was at the airport watching CNN and they were busting homeopathic frauds. Wait for it… wait… wait… ok. Turns out that eating dirt is not good for you. I know, “jump back, I shouldn’t eat dirt. OOPS!” If I had been dutifully drinking this dirt water it might have killed me. (My liver probably couldn't have handled another strain.)Given this empirical evidence, I knew that when Grandma pressed the bottle into my hand I should've thrown it away. It was a liniment ("to heal your foot, it worked great on Daisy[her schnauzer].") I don't recall what it was called, but it sounded ominously like "Balrog," which we all know is a fiery demon. Hmmmmmmmm... a fiery demon for my foot... sounds awesome. I didn't want to lie to my Grandmother and I figured a liniment probably couldn't cause liver failure, so I decided try it. And in any event, my foot had been really improving, so what could it hurt? Baby blue and completely opaque, it looked like Smurf Jam and smelled like the bastard child of a tube of mentos and some necco wafers. I put it on my foot. It tingled and made my foot feel cold. I thought "either this is working or my foot is about to fall completely off." As I sat reading Calvin and Hobbes, my foot became quite numb. At some point I got up to brush my teeth. The next day I could barely walk. That woman is a hazard.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

My CoWorker's (Very Knowledgable in the Arts of Things that Suck) Suggestions for Worst Song Ever:

Lou Bega, Mambo Number Five (Eeep!)Having My Baby, Paul Anka (Yipes!)Starland Vocal Band, Afternoon Delight (GROSS!!!)Cherry Pie, Warrant (I LOVE this song)Danny’s Song, Loggins and Messina (Even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with you honey....) ( I also LOVE this song)She’s Like the Wind, Patrick Swayze (Is this really THAT bad?) (Ok she's like the wind through my trees... that is pretty bad.)Zager and Evans, In the Year 2525 (This song is BOMB. Screw you guys.)William Shatner’s rendition of Lucy in the Sky with DiamondsMaxwell Silver Hammer, The BeattlesMichael Bolton’s rendition of When Man Loves a Woman (Bullet to the brain, shark infested waters, 10 minutes with Michael Bolton? I vote brain, though sharks are quite fascinating.)Memories from CatsEvery song from Phantom of the Opera

Ground Control to Major Tom, David Bowie (I saw the Labirynth... everything about David Bowie is awesome... in size.)

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

I was just cat-sitting for a very nice coworker and friend of my aunt. She has a lovely apartment, sparse, but everything in it is top quality. She even has one of those fancy smart-foam mattresses. This mattress cost thousands of dollars. Now if you see the commercial you see that a blandly attractive woman can jump on one side of the bed and the walk over to pick up a glass of water on the other side of the bed… wait for it… the glass didn’t move the whole time she was jumping. Now what they didn’t show in the commercial is when the girl steps forward to get off the bed and sprains her ankle in the hole left by the glass of water in her hand.I have a methodology to sleeping. When you are an insomniac you have to take extra care in all the little rituals. First I start out on my back, reading till sleepy, then flipping off the light. Now at a certain point I will want to adjust to sleep on my side like a sensible girl. However, when on a smart foam mattress the mattress forms around the curves of your body. Thus when you try to move the mattress is still in the shape of your curves, as they were positioned 15 seconds ago. 15 seconds doesn’t seem like a long time, but the depression in the mattress caused by my butt disappears at just a slow enough rate that I can’t flip over onto my side. Talk about depression. I turn over, but with nothing to support my hindquarters I just flop ineffectually back into the same position. I am trapped in my own butt divot. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to shell out 2 grand to buy a mattress that traps me in my own asshole.

I’ve had this fear of dwarfs, well little people in general since this one time in a bar. I was living in a tiny town in the big empty side of the state with a friend of mine. I was blissfully slumbering curled up with my roommate’s cat when my door flew open. “Wake up! We’re going out!!!”“It’s Wednesday, Renee.” “Don’t ca-are.” “I was asleep.” “Don’t ca-are.” “I hate you.”“I’ll buy your drinks.” “Ok.”We skittered down the street in the chill of nighttime in the desert. The place was pretty empty… not unusual for a summer weeknight in a college town. Renee went to chat with the bartender, a frat brother of one of our closest friends. That day the bar had gotten its first Digital Juke Box- I was mesmerized. It had every song I’d ever heard so naturally I chose Wilson Phillips, “Hold On” as the inaugural song. People began drifting in and the best seats began to fill up. From our spot at the bar we could peruse the entire room. And that was when I made my error, inadvertent eye contact. With this uhm… dwarf. Now to make this abundantly clear, in spite of the fact that my friend Loren and I watched a three our documentary on little people one Saturday night, I have never had any curiosity about and certainly no fear towards little people of all varieties. In fact growing up one of my mother’s friends and colleagues was a dwarf and I’d always been fond of him as a child. But this guy, he was not freaky because he was tiny, I mean a lot of dwarves are not that much shorter than I am. This guy was freaky because he looked like a dwarf from Deliverance. Actually if you put the Leprechaun from the five Leprechaun movies in a trucker hat, plaid shirt, acid wash jeans and white hightops—that’s the guy. Renee was chatting up some guys playing pool and I was playing cards with the bartender. The dwarf ambled up and nimbly climbed the bar-stool. He ordered Pabst. Shudder. Then he stared. I hoped he would say something. Really anything, but really I hoped for something awful. Then I could act scandalized and strut off without feeling like a bigot. But he didn’t say a word, he just leaned close and stared. He had the sharpest teeth I have ever seen, they were broken and jagged like Gollum’s.When the bartender got called away I must have looked panicked, alone at the bar with the silent, staring dwarf. A stranger walked up and said, “Hey there pumpkin, we’re all in the back.” He led me off and quite frankly I couldn’t have picked a more adorable fellow if I’d been trying. But by the time I had joined his little party at the back of the bar I already felt terrible. I was a bigot. I was a homely-phobe and a dwarfo-phobe.And then I turned back to look for Renee- she wasn’t there, but he was. He had followed me from the bar to the tables and had sat a discreet distance of three feet from me. The fellow, Brian, I think (they are always named Brian, always) seemed perplexed, not wanting to come off as an asshole he just pulled my chair closer and put his arm around my shoulders. Eventually I turned again to find the dwarf had scooched his chair closer to me, I think he was sniffing me. I declared that I needed to go home. Brian offered to walk us home and I agreed. As we left the bar the dwarf exited behind us. We sped up. Brian offered to have us to his house for a night cap to wait out the dwarf. We agreed. He seemed to be nervous, maybe he’d seen The Leprechan too. Later, when Brian was driving us home, he looked in the rearview mirror a lot.Ever since that night I’ve been kind of freaked out by dwarves. Plus that obsession some folks have with them (think The Man Show or midget porn) definitely doesn’t decrease my worries.

Friday, January 06, 2006

Well kids, it's been raining for 19 days. NINETEEN! Now let me say that, yes, Seattle is pretty grey a lot of the time, and fairly consistently drizzly throughout the winter. But it has been actually raining, raining like it rains in other places. I have been carrying an umbrella. An UMBRELLA!I just looked at weather.com.Ok, are you ready for the 10 day forecast?1/6 Rain1/7 Rain1/8 Showers1/9 Rain1/10 Showers1/11 Showers1/12 Showers1/13 Showers1/14 Showers1/15 Rain/Snow